Unicorns

It’s been a year since we published the first fintech unicorn list. It includes companies (and exits) in the financial sector (either direct services or software) founded since 2000 and worth at least $1 billion (actually we are using $900 million as the floor).

This year, the list has more than tripled to 36 companies, up 25 from the 11 last year. It’s partly a reflection of increased transparency into global valuations. For example, China has four alt-lenders on the list compared to zero last year. But mostly it’s a dramatic increase in private company valuations, especially in the lending sector.

In addition, we’ve listed 34 “semi-unicorns” (narwhals?) with estimated values of $500 million to $800 million. In total, there are 70 companies with a total estimated value of about $100 billion (~ 2 Ubers).

Here is the sector breakdown:

Sector

Unicorns

Semi-Unicorns

Total

Lending

11

11

22

Payments

11

6

17

Investing

1

5

6

Real estate

2

3

5

Insurance

3

1

4

Accounting

2

0

2

Credit reports

2

0

2

Security

1

1

2

Bitcoin

1

2

3

Other

2

5

7

Total

36

34

70

Some caveats:
1. For private companies (28 of the 36 unicorns), values are hugely dependent on the terms of the deal (read this), so they are not comparable to public company valuations.
2. About half the unicorn valuations are derived from public statements by the companies or investors during recent rounds or acquisitions. However, half are estimated by analysts/algorithms from tracking firms, especially Funderbeam, an Estonian startup that’s relatively new on the scene. So there is a lot of room for error in these valuations.
3. For the “near-unicorn” list we’ve added a number of companies that have recently raised large rounds, but have not made public statements about valuation. We estimated most of those at $500 million, but these are simply educated guesses.
4. We are using a broad definition of fintech including real estate. Also, we’ve included a few Finovate alums that are not pure-play fintech, but that have a significant financial services business.